Auger-Aliassime survives five-set chaos to reach the quarterfinals and a Djokovic showdown
wo match points from the quarterfinals, Félix Auger-Aliassime watched an apparently injured Alejandro Davidovich Fokina wriggle free and force a fifth set – before the Canadian (No 3) regrouped to win 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 6-7, 6-1 in four and a half hours. Waiting in the last eight: Novak Djokovic..
Felix Auger-Aliassime | © PsNewz
Félix Auger-Aliassime needed four hours and 25 minutes and a large dose of the inexplicable, but the Canadian is back in the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the first time since 2021. The world No. 4 outlasted Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina 6-7, 7-6, 6-3, 6-7, 6-1 in a fourth-round contest that turned on one of the stranger passages of the fortnight.
Leading two sets to one, Auger-Aliassime moved to 5-3 in the fourth and held two match points, seemingly a game from the last eight. What followed defied logic. Davidovich Fokina, who had crumpled to the turf with an apparent ankle injury, recovered to save them; a rattled Auger-Aliassime double-faulted after the resumption; and the Spaniard forced a tiebreak, took it, and levelled the match to send it to a decider.
The reprieve did not last. Auger-Aliassime raced 5-0 clear in the fifth and, though Davidovich Fokina saved four match points on serve, sealed the win with an ace on his own first match point.
For all the turbulence, it was a day of firsts and lasts for the Canadian No. 1. He lost serve for the first – and only – time all tournament, Davidovich Fokina finally converting the seventh break point he had manufactured across the afternoon. Both men had reached the last 16 without dropping a set, the only two players in the men’s draw to do so; their meeting produced a five-set epic instead.
Felix vs. Djokovic next
The result carries weight beyond the drama. It is Auger-Aliassime’s sixth Grand Slam quarterfinal and equals his best run at Wimbledon, and it makes him the third Canadian in history, man or woman, to reach the singles quarterfinals here more than once, after Milos Raonic and Robert Powell.
Auger-Aliassime next faces seven-time champion Novak Djokovic, who earlier moved past Roger Federer for the most men’s singles wins in Wimbledon history. The pair have split their two previous meetings. For Davidovich Fokina, a first Wimbledon quarterfinal — and a maiden top-five win at a major — slipped away after the best Grand Slam showing of his career.
